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William of Tyre
| death_place = Tyre | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | residence = | nationality = | other_names = | known_for = Medieval chronicler | education = | employer = | occupation = Archbishop, chancellor | home_town = | title = | salary = | networth = | height = | weight = | term = | predecessor = Frederick de la Roche | successor = Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre | party = | boards = | religion = Roman Catholicism | spouse = | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | signature = | website = | footnotes = }}William of Tyre (c. 1130 – September 29, 1186) was Archbishop of Tyre and a chronicler of the Crusades and the Middle Ages. He is also known as William II to distinguish him from William of Malines, the first Archbishop of Tyre by that name. He grew up in Jerusalem at the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was established in 1099 after the First Crusade, and spent twenty years studying the liberal arts and canon law in the universities of Europe. Following William's return to Jerusalem in 1165, King Amalric I appointed him ambassador to the Byzantine Empire. Amalric also assigned him to tutor his son, the future King Baldwin IV, whom William discovered to be a leper. After Amalric's death William also became chancellor of Jerusalem and Archbishop of Tyre, two of the highest secular and ecclesiastic offices in the kingdom. In 1179 William led the eastern delegation to the Third Lateran Council, but as he was also involved in the dynastic struggle that developed during Baldwin IV's reign, his importance waned when a rival faction gained control of royal affairs. He was passed over for the prestigious Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and died in obscurity, probably in 1186. William wrote an account of the Third Lateran Council and a history of the Islamic states from the time of Muhammad, neither of which works survive. He is known today as the author of a history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which continues to be an importance source for modern historians. William's European education allowed him to compose his chronicle in almost flawless Latin, with numerous quotations from classical literature. The chronicle was translated into French soon after his death, and thereafter into numerous other languages, and because it is the only source for the history of Jerusalem at that time written by a lifelong resident, historians have often assumed that William's statements could be taken at face value. However, more recent historians have shown that William's involvement in the kingdom's political disputes resulted in obvious biases in his account. Early life The Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded in 1099 at the end of the First Crusade; it was the third of four Christian territories to be founded by the crusaders, following the County of Edessa and the Principality of Antioch, and followed by the County of Tripoli. Jerusalem's first three rulers, Godfrey of Bouillon, his brother Baldwin I, and their cousin Baldwin II, expanded and secured the kingdom's borders so that the kingdom was roughly contiguous with modern Israel and Lebanon. During the first few decades of the kingdom's existence, the population swelled with pilgrims who could now safely visit the holiest sites of Christendom, and with merchants from the Mediterranean city-states of Italy and France who were eager to exploit the rich trade markets of the east.The First Crusade is extensively documented in primary and secondary sources. See for example Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade: A New History (Oxford: 2004) and Christopher Tyerman, God's War: A New History of the Crusades (Penguin: 2006), which incorporate the most recent academic research, and Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Pennsylvania: 1991). Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades: Volume 1, The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: 1953), is a popular account, although now out of date. William's origins have been variously claimed as English, French, German, or Italian; however, he could not have been German as he had little knowledge of that country, and a claim for an English origin is probably the result of confusion with his English predecessor William of Malines.Emily Atwater Babcock and August C. Krey, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea (Columbia University Press, 1943), pg. 7. The Histoire littéraire de la France also attributes this to English nationalism (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres), vol. 14, pg. 587. He was born in Jerusalem around 1130, to parents who were probably among the French or Italian merchants who had settled in the kingdom, although it is unknown whether they participated in the First Crusade or if they arrived later. He had at least one brother, Ralph, who was one of the city's burgesses, a non-noble leader of the merchant community. Nothing more is known about his family, except that his mother died before 1165.Peter W. Edbury and John G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pg. 14. William's parents were "apparently well-to-do",R. B. C. Huygens, "Editing William of Tyre", Sacris Erudiri 27 (1984), pg. 462. and as a child he was educated in Jerusalem, at the cathedral school in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The scholaster, or school-master, John the Pisan taught William to read and write, and first introduced him to Latin.Hans E. Mayer, "Guillaume de Tyr à l’école" (Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Dijon 117, 1985-86), pg. 264; repr. in Kings and Lords in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Variorum, 1994). John later became cardinal priest of SS. Silvestri e Martino, and supported Antipope Victor IV (1159–1164) over Pope Alexander III. From William's chronicle it is clear that he also knew French and possibly Italian, but there is not enough evidence to determine if he learned Greek, Persian, and Arabic, as is sometimes claimed.R. B. C. Huygens, Willemi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis, vol. 38 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), introduction, pg. 2. Around 1145 William went to Europe to continue his education. He studied liberal arts and theology in Paris and Orleans for about ten years, with professors who had been students of Thierry of Chartres and Gilbert de la Porrée; he also spent time studying under Robert of Melun and Adam de Parvo Ponte, among others. He also studied the classics with Hilary of Orleans, and mathematics ("especially Euclid") with William of Soissons. For six years, he studied theology with Peter Lombard and Maurice de Sully. Afterwards, he studied civil law and canon law in Bologna, with the "Four Doctors", Hugolinus de Porta Ravennate, Bulgarus, Martinus Gosia, and Jacob de Boraigne.The chapter of his chronicle detailing his education in Europe was lost until Robert Huygens discovered it 1961, in a manuscript of William's chronicle in the Vatican Library (ms. Vaticanus latinus 2002); Huygens, "Guillaume de Tyr étudiant: un chapître (XIX, 12) de son Histoire retrouvé" (Latomus 21, 1962), pg. 813. It is unknown why no other manuscript has this chapter, but Huygens suggests an early copyist considered it out of place within the rest of book nineteen and excised it, and thus all subsequent copies also lacked it (ibid., pg. 820). It was included in Huygen's critical edition of the chronicle (bk. 19, ch. 12, pp. 879-881.) As the chapter had not yet been discovered, it is not included in the 1943 English translation by Emily Atwater Babcock and August C. Krey (A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, Columbia University Press, 1943), but an English translation has since been published; G. A. Loud and J. W. Cox, "The 'lost' autobiographical chapter of William of Tyre's history (book XIX.12)", in The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan V. Murray (ABC-Clio, 2006). It has also been translated online by Paul R. Hyams, "William of Tyre's Education, 1145/65". William's list "gives us almost a 'Who's Who' of the grammarians, philosophers, theologians and law teachers of the so-called Twelfth-Century Renaissance", and shows that he was as well-educated as any European cleric, such as his contemporary John of Salisbury, who had many of the same teachers.G. A. Loud and J. W. Cox, ibid. Religious and political life in Jerusalem After his return to the Holy Land in 1165 he was well-suited to rise through the ranks of the ecclesiastical and political worlds in Jerusalem. He became canon of the cathedral at Acre, and in 1167 was appointed archdeacon of the cathedral of Tyre by Frederick de la Roche, archbishop of Tyre, with the support of King Amalric I.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 15-16. Amalric had come to power in 1164 and had made it his goal to conquer Egypt; after the disastrous Second Crusade in 1148, when the crusader armies were defeated at Damascus, Muslim territory to the east of Jerusalem had fallen under the control of the powerful sultan Nur ad-Din, and Jerusalem could only expand to the west, towards the much weaker Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Egypt had been invaded by King Baldwin I fifty years earlier, and was forced to pay yearly tribute to Jerusalem; in 1153 Ascalon, the last Fatimid outpost in Palestine, had fallen to the crusaders. Nur ad-Din, however, also wished to acquire Egypt, and had sent his army to hinder Amalric's plan. In 1167 Amalric married Maria Comnena grand-niece of Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus, and in 1168 the king sent William on a diplomatic mission to finalize a treaty for a joint campaign in Egypt. The expedition, Amalric's fourth, was the first with support from the Byzantine navy. Amalric, however, did not wait for the fleet to arrive. He managed to capture Damietta, but within a few years he was expelled from Egypt by one of Nur ad-Din's generals, Saladin, who would later become Jerusalem's greatest threat.Hans E. Mayer, The Crusades, 2nd ed., trans. John Gillingham (Oxford: 1988), pp. 119-120. Meanwhile, William continued his advancement in the kingdom. In 1169 he visited Rome, possibly to answer accusations made against him by Archbishop Frederick, although if so, the charge is unknown. It is also possible that while Frederick was away on a diplomatic mission in Europe, there may have been a dispute in the archdiocese for which William required his assistance.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 16-17. , London.)|alt=A miniature painting from an Old French manuscript of William's chronicle, showing the future Baldwin IV playing with other children and not being hurt when he is scratched - a sign of leprosy.]] On his return from Rome in 1170 he may have been commissioned by Amalric to begin writing a history of the Kingdom. He also became the tutor of Amalric's son and heir, Baldwin IV. When Baldwin was thirteen years old, he was playing with some other children and they were trying to cause each other pain by scratching each others' arms. "The other boys gave evidence of pain by their outcries," wrote William, "but Baldwin, although his comrades did not spare him, endured it altogether too patiently, as if he felt nothing...It is impossible to refrain from tears while speaking of this great misfortune."William of Tyre, trans. Babcock and Krey, vol. 2, Book XXI, chapter 1, pg. 398. When William was informed of this, he inspected Baldwin's arms and recognized the possible symptoms of leprosy, which was confirmed as Baldwin grew older.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pg. 17; Bernard Hamilton, ''The Leper King and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 27-28. Amalric died prematurely in 1174, and Baldwin IV succeeded him as king. Nur ad-Din also died in 1174, and his general Saladin spent the rest of the decade consolidating his hold on both Egypt and Nur ad-Din's possessions in Syria, which allowed him to completely encircle Jerusalem. The subsequent events have often been interpreted as a struggle between two opposing factions, the "court party", made up of Baldwin's mother, Amalric's first wife Agnes of Courtenay, her immediate family, and recent arrivals from Europe who were inexperienced in the affairs of the kingdom and who were in favour of war with Saladin; and the "noble party", led by Raymond III of Tripoli and the native nobility of the kingdom, who favoured peaceful co-existence with the Muslims. This is the interpretation offered by William himself in his chronicle, and it was taken as fact by all subsequent historians; Peter W. Edbury, however, has more recently argued that William must be considered extremely partisan as he was naturally allied with Raymond, who was responsible for his later advancement in political and religious offices. The accounts of the thirteenth-century authors who continued William's chronicle in French must also be considered suspect, as they were allied to Raymond's supporters in the Ibelin family.Peter W. Edbury, "Propaganda and faction in the Kingdom of Jerusalem: the background to Hattin", in Crusaders and Moslems in Twelfth-Century Syria (ed. Maya Shatzmiller, Leiden: Brill, 1993), pg. 174. The general consensus among recent historians is that although there was a dynastic struggle, "the division was not between native barons and newcomers from the West, but between the king's maternal and paternal kin."Hamilton pg. 158. Miles of Plancy briefly held the regency for the underaged Baldwin IV, until his assassination in October of 1174; Raymond III was soon appointed to replace him.Hamilton, pg. 93. Raymond named William chancellor of Jerusalem, as well as archdeacon of Nazareth, and on June 6, 1175, William was elected archbishop of Tyre to replace Archbishop of Frederick, who had died in October of 1174.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 18-19. William's duties as chancellor probably did not take up too much of his time; the scribes and officials in the chancery drafted documents and it may not have even been necessary for him to be present to sign them. Instead he focused on his duties as archbishop. In 1177 he performed the funeral services for William of Montferrat, husband of Baldwin IV's sister Sibylla, when the Patriarch of Jerusalem was too sick to attend.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 19-20. In 1179, William was one of the delegates from Jerusalem and the other crusader states at the Third Council of the Lateran; among the others was Heraclius, archbishop of Caesarea, Joscius, bishop of Acre and William's future successor in Tyre, the bishops of Sebastea, Bethlehem, Tripoli, and Jabala, and the abbot of Mount Sion. The Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch were unable to attend, and William and the other bishops did not have sufficient weight to persuade Pope Alexander III of the need for a new crusade.Hamilton, pg. 144. William was, however, sent by Alexander as an ambassador to Emperor Manuel, and Manuel then sent him on a mission to the Principality of Antioch. William himself does not mention exactly what happened during these embassies, but he probably discussed the Byzantine alliance with Jerusalem, and Manuel's protectorate over Antioch, where, due to pressure from Rome and Jerusalem, the emperor was forced to give up his attempts to restore a Greek Patriarch. William was absent from Jerusalem for two years, returning home in 1180.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 54-55, 146-47; Hamilton, pp. 147-149. The patriarchal election of 1180 During William's absence a crisis had developed in Jerusalem. King Baldwin had reached the age of majority in 1176 and Raymond III had been removed from the regency, but as a leper Baldwin could have no children and could not be expected to rule much longer. After the death of William of Montferrat in 1177, King Baldwin's widowed sister Sibylla required a new husband. At Easter in 1180, the two factions were divided even further when Raymond and his cousin Bohemond III of Antioch attempted to force Sibylla to marry Baldwin of Ibelin. Raymond and Bohemond were King Baldwin's nearest male relatives in the paternal line, and could have claimed the throne if the king died without an heir or a suitable replacement. Before Raymond and Bohemond arrived, however, Agnes and King Baldwin arranged for Sibylla to be married to a Poitevin newcomer, Guy of Lusignan, whose older brother Amalric of Lusignan was already an established figure at court.Hamilton, pp. 150-158. The dispute also affected William, since he had been appointed chancellor by Raymond and may have been in disfavour after Raymond was removed from the regency. When the Patriarch of Jerusalem died on October 6, 1180, the two most obvious choices for his successor were William and Heraclius of Caesarea. They were fairly evenly matched in background and education, but politically they were allied with opposite parties, as Heraclius was one of Agnes of Courtenay's supporters. It seems that the canons of the Holy Sepulchre were unable to decide, and asked the king for advice; due to Agnes' influence, Heraclius was elected. There were rumours that Agnes and Heraclius were lovers, but this information comes from the partisan thirteenth-century continuations of William's chronicle, and there is no other evidence that such rumours are true. William himself says almost nothing about the election and Heraclius' character or his subsequent patriarchate, which likely reflects his disappointment at the outcome.Hamilton, pp. 162-163; Edbury and Rowe, "William of Tyre and the Patriarchal election of 1180", The English Historical Review 93 (1978), repr. in Kingdoms of the Crusaders: From Jerusalem to Cyprus (Aldershot: Ashgate, Variorum Collected Series Studies, 1999), pp. 23-25. Death William remained Archbishop of Tyre and chancellor of the kingdom, and the king and Raymond were eventually reconciled. The thirteenth-century continuators claim that Heraclius excommunicated William in 1183, but it is unknown why this would have happened. The story goes on to say that William appealed to the Pope in Rome, where Heraclius then had him poisoned. Peter Edbury and John Rowe suggest that if there is any truth to the story, then William must have been very powerful when his supporters were in control of the kingdom; but they also argue that the obscurity of William's life during these years shows that he did not play a large political role, but concentrated on church affairs and the writing of his history. The story of his excommunication, and the unlikely detail that he was poisoned, were probably an invention of the thirteenth-century French continuators of his chronicle.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 20-22. William actually continued to write up until 1184, but he did not think that there was any point to continuing his work; the chronicle was meant to praise the kingdom and its rulers, but at the time, internally divided by political factions and externally surrounded by the forces of Saladin, "the only subjects that present themselves are the disasters of a sorrowing country and its manifold misfortunes, themes which can serve only to draw forth lamentations and tears."William of Tyre, trans. Babcock and Krey, vol. 2, book 23, preface, pg. 505. His importance had dwindled with the victory of Agnes and her supporters, and with the accession of Baldwin V, the infant son of Sibylla and William of Montferrat; Baldwin was a sickly child and his rule lasted only a year, and in 1186 he was succeeded by his mother Sibylla and her second husband Guy of Lusignan, ruling jointly. William was probably in failing health by then. Rudolf Hiestand discovered that the date of William's death was September 29, but the year was not recorded; whatever the year, there was a new chancellor in May 1185 and a new archbishop of Tyre by October 21, 1186.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pg. 22. Hans Mayer concluded that William died in 1186, and this is the year generally accepted by scholars.Hans Mayer, "Zum Tod Wilhelms von Tyrus" (Archiv für Diplomatik 5/6, 1959-1960; repr. in Kreuzzüge und lateinischer Osten (Ashgate: Variorum, 1983)), pg. 201. Huygens (Chronicon, pg. 1), the Dictionary of the Middle Ages (ed. Joseph Strayer; article "William of Tyre" by Susan M. Babbitt (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989), vol. 12, pg. 643), and the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing (ed. Kelly Boyd; article "William of Tyre" by Helen J. Nicholson (Taylor & Francis, 1999), vol. 2, pg. 1301), among others, accept Mayer's date. William's foresight about the misfortunes of his country was proven correct less than a year later. Saladin defeated King Guy at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, and went on to capture Jerusalem and almost every other city of the kingdom, except the seat of William's archdiocese, Tyre. News of the fall of Jerusalem shocked Europe and plans were made to send assistance.Hamilton, pp. 229-232. According to Roger of Wendover, William was actually present at Gisors in France in 1188 when Henry II of England and Philip II of France agreed to go on crusade: "Thereupon the king of the English first took the sign of the cross at the hands of the archbishop of Rheims and William of Tyre, the latter of whom had been entrusted by our lord the pope with the office of legate in the affairs of the crusade in the western part of Europe."Roger of Wendover's Flowers of History, trans. J. A. Giles (London, 1849), vol. II, pg. 63. However, Roger was mistaken; he knew that an unnamed archbishop of Tyre was present and assumed it must have been the William whose chronicle he possessed, although the archbishop in question was actually William's successor Joscius.Babcock and Krey, pg. 25, n. 24. Works William himself reports that he wrote an account of the Lateran Council which he attended, which does not survive. He also wrote a Historia or Gesta orientalium principum dealing with the history of the Holy Land from time of Muhammad until 1184, for which he used Eutychius of Alexandria as his main source. This work seems to have been known in Europe in the thirteenth century but it also does not survive.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 23-24. Latin chronicle William's great work is a Latin chronicle, written between 1170 and 1184.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pg. 26. It contains twenty-three books; the final book is unfinished, but it may have been completed and the pages may be lost. The twenty-third book deals with the events of 1183 and the beginning of 1184, and was still being revised when he stopped writing. The chronicle begins with the conquest of Syria by Umar in the seventh century, but most of it deals with the advent of the First Crusade and the subsequent political history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It is arranged, but was not written, chronologically; the first sections to be written were probably the chapters dealing with the invasion of Egypt in 1167, which are extremely detailed and were likely composed before the Fatimid dynasty was overthrown in 1171. Much of the chronicle was finished before he left to attend the Lateran Council, but new additions and corrections were made after his return in 1180, perhaps because he now realized that European readers would also be interested in the history of the kingdom. In 1184 he wrote the Prologue and the beginning of the twenty-third book, but he did not have an opportunity to write any further.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 28-31. William had access to the chronicles of the First Crusade, including Fulcher of Chartres, Albert of Aix, Raymond of Aguilers, Baldric of Dol, and the Gesta Francorum, as well as other documents located in the kingdom's archives. He also used Walter the Chancellor and other now-lost works for the history of the Principality of Antioch. From the end of Fulcher's chronicle in 1127, William is the only source of information from an author living in Jerusalem. For events that happened in William's own lifetime, he interviewed older people who had witnessed the events about which he was writing, and drew on his own personal experiences and memories.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 44-46. William's classical education allowed him to use numerous ancient and early Christian authors, either for quotations or as inspiration for the framework and organization of the chronicle.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 32-33. His vocabulary is almost entirely classical, with only a few medieval constructions such as "loricator" (someone who makes armour, a calque of the Arabic "zarra") and "assellare" (to empty one's bowels). He was capable of clever word-play and advanced rhetorical devices, but he was prone to repetition of a number of words and phrases. His writing also shows phrasing and spelling which is peculiar to purely classical Latin but not uncommon in medieval Latin, such as: *confusion between reflexive and possessive pronouns; *confusion over the use of the accusative and ablative cases, especially after the preposition in; *collapsed diphthongs (i.e. the Latin dipthongs ae and oe are spelled simply e''); *the dative "mihi" ("to me") is spelled "michi"; *a single "s" is often doubled, for example in the adjectival place-name ending which he often spells "-enssis"; he also represents the Arabic "sh", a sound which Latin lacks, with the spelling "ss", for example in the name Shawar which he spells "Ssawar".Huygens, ''Chronicon, pp. 40-47. Huygens continues with a lengthy discussion of William's style and language. Literary themes and biases . It was mainly on William's authority that Godfrey became the hero of the First Crusade.|alt=Bronze statue of Godfrey of Bouillon in the Hofkirche of Innsbruck. It was mainly on William's authority that Godfrey became the hero of the First Crusade.]] Despite his quotations from Christian authors and from the Bible, he did not place too much emphasis on the miraculous intervention of God in human affairs. He was more concerned with the political and military actions of the crusaders, which results in a somewhat "secular" history.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 42-43. Nevertheless, he included much information that is clearly legendary, especially when referring to the First Crusade, which even in his own day was already considered a heroic age of great Christian heroes. Expanding on the accounts of Albert of Aix, Peter the Hermit is given prominence in the preaching of the First Crusade, to the point that it was he, not Pope Urban II, who originally conceived the crusade.Frederic Duncalf, "The First Crusade: Clermont to Constantinople", in A History of the Crusades, vol. 1, pg. 258. Godfrey of Bouillon, the first ruler of crusader Jerusalem, was also depicted as the leader of the crusade from the beginning, and William attributed to him legendary strength and virtue. This reflected the almost mythological status that Godfrey and the other first crusaders held for the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the late twelfth century.John Carl Andressohn, The Ancestry and Life of Godfrey of Bouillon (Indiana University Publications, Social Science Series 5, 1947), pg. 5. William gave a more nuanced picture of the kings of his own day. He claimed to have been commissioned by King Amalric himself to write his chronicle, but William did not allow himself to praise the king excessively; for example, Amalric did not respect the rights of the church, and although he was a good military commander, he could not stop the increasing threat from the neighbouring Muslim states. On a personal level, William admired the king's education and his interest in history and law, but also noted that Amalric had "breasts like those of a woman hanging down to his waist"William of Tyre, trans. Babcock and Krey, vol. 2, book XIX, chapter 3, pg. 300. and was shocked when the king questioned the resurrection of the dead.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 75-76. About Amalric's son Baldwin IV, however, "there was no ambiguity".Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pg. 76. Baldwin was nothing but heroic in the face of his debilitating leprosy, and he led military campaigns against Saladin even while still underaged; William tends to gloss over campaigns where Baldwin was not actually in charge, preferring to direct his praise towards the afflicted king rather than subordinate commanders.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pg. 78. William's history can be seen as an apologia, a literary defense, for the kingdom, which, by the 1170s and 1180s, western Europeans were reluctant to support, but more specifically for Baldwin's rule, as leprosy was usually considered to be divine punishment.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pg. 65. William was famously biased against the Knights Templar, whom he believed to be arrogant and disrespectful of both secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies, as they were not required to pay tithes and were legally not directly accountable to the local bishop or secular lord. His account of the foundation of the Templars is the earliest description, although it was written decades later; he was generally favourable of them in their early days, but resented the power and influence they held in his own time.Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pg. 11. William accused them of hindering the Siege of Ascalon in 1153; of poorly defending a cave-fortress in 1165, for which twelve Templars were hanged by King Amalric; of sabotaging the invasion of Egypt in 1168; and of murdering Hashshashin ambassadors in 1173.Barber, pg. 12. Compared to other Latin authors of the twelfth century, William is surprisingly favourable to the Byzantine Empire. He had visited the Byzantine court as an official ambassador and was probably more knowledgeable of Byzantine affairs than any other Latin chronicler. He shared the poor opinion of Alexius I Comnenus that had developed during the First Crusade, although he was also critical of the some of the crusaders' dealings with Alexius.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 132-34. He was more impressed by Alexius' son John II Comnenus; he did not approve of John's attempts to bring the crusader Principality of Antioch under Byzantine control, but John's military expeditions against the Muslim states which were a common enemy to both Greeks and Latins were considered admirable.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 137-141 Emperor Manuel, whom William met during his visits to Constantinople, was portrayed more ambivalently, much like King Amalric. William admired him personally, but recognized that the Empire was powerless to help Jerusalem against the Muslim forces of Nur ad-Din and Saladin. William was especially disappointed in the failure of the joint campaign against Egypt in 1169. The end of the chronicle coincides with the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople and the chaos that followed the coup of Andronicus I Comnenus, and in his description of those events, William was certainly not immune to the extreme anti-Greek rhetoric that was often found in Western European sources.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 141-150. As a medieval Christian author William could hardly avoid hostility towards the kingdom's Muslim neighbours, but as an educated man who lived among Muslims in the east, he was rarely polemical or completely dismissive of Islam. He did not think Muslims were pagans, but rather infidels, people who believed in God, but not in the correct Christian way, and who followed the teachings of a false prophet.R. C. Schwinges, "William of Tyre, the Muslim enemy, and the problem of tolerance." Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades, ed. Michael Gervers and James M. Powell (Syracuse University Press, 2001), pp. 126-27. He often praised the Muslim leaders of his own day, even if he lamented their power over the Christian kingdom; thus Muslim rulers such as Mu'in ad-Din Unur, Nur ad-Din, Shirkuh, and even Jerusalem's ultimate conqueror Saladin are presented as honourable and pious men, characteristics that William did not bestow on many of his own Christian contemporaries.Schwinges, pg. 128. Circulation of the chronicle After William's death the chronicle was copied and circulated in the crusader states and was eventually brought to Europe. In the thirteenth century, James of Vitry had access to a copy while he was Bishop of Acre, and it was used by Guy of Bazoches, Matthew Paris, and Roger of Wendover in their own chronicles. However, there are only ten known manuscripts that contain the Latin chronicle, all of which come from France and England, so William's work may not have been very widely read in its original form.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 3-4. In England, however, the chronicle was expanded in Latin, with additional information from the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, and the chronicle of Roger Hoveden; this version was written around 1220.Helen J. Nicholson, ed., The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: The Itinerarium Peregrinorum and the Gesta Regis Ricardi (Ashgate, 1997), pp. 3-4. It is unknown what title William himself gave his chronicle, although one group of manuscripts uses Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum and another uses Historia Ierosolimitana.Huygens, Chronicon, pp. 32-34. The Latin text was printed for the first time in Basel in 1549 by Nicholas Brylinger; it was also published in the Gesta Dei per Francos by Jacques Bongars in 1611 and the Recueil des historiens des croisades (RHC) by Auguste-Arthur Beugnot and Auguste Le Prévost in 1844, and Bongars' text was reprinted in the Patrologia Latina by Jacques Paul Migne in 1855. The now-standard Latin critical edition, based on six of the surviving manuscripts, was published as Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon in the Corpus Christianorum in 1986, by R. B. C. Huygens, with notes by Hans E. Mayer and Gerhard Rösch.Huygens, Chronicon, pp. 87-91. The manuscripts used by Huygens are from two related traditions; Bibliothèque nationale lat. 17801 ("N"), Bibliothèque de la faculté de médecine de Montpellier 91 ("M"), and Bibliothèque nationale lat. 6066 ("P") have a French provenance, and Corpus Christi College 95 ("C"), British Library Royal 14 C.X ("B"), and Magdalene College F.4.22 ("W") have an English provenance. The aforementioned Vatican lat. 2002 ("V") and a related fragment ("Fr") were also used. Two manuscripts, Bibliothèque nationale lat. 17153 ("L") and Vatican Reginensis lat. 690 ("R") were not used in Huygens' edition. Huygens, Chronicon, pp. 3-31. The RHC edition was translated into English by Emily A. Babcock and August C. Krey in 1943 as "A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea," although the translation is sometimes incomplete or inexact.Babcock and Krey, pg. 44. Old French translation A translation of the chronicle into Old French, made around 1223, was particularly well-circulated and had many anonymous additions made to it in the 13th century. In contrast to the surviving Latin manuscripts, there are "at least fifty-nine manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts" containing the Old French translation.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pg. 4. There are also independent French continuations attributed to Ernoul and Bernard le Trésorier. The translation was sometimes called the Livre dou conqueste; it was known by this name throughout Europe as well as in the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus and in Cilician Armenia, and fourteenth-century Venetian geographer Marino Sanuto the Elder had a copy of it. The French was further translated into Spanish, as the Gran Conquista de Ultramar, during the reign of Alfonso the Wise of Castile in the late thirteenth century. The French version was so widespread that the Renaissance author Francesco Pipino translated it back into Latin, unaware that a Latin original already existed. A Middle English translation of the French was made by William Caxton in the 15th century.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pp. 4-5. Modern assessment William's neutrality as an historian was often taken for granted in the past. August C. Krey, for example, believed that "his impartiality...is scarcely less impressive than his critical skill."Babcock and Krey, pg. 32. Despite this excellent reputation, D. W. T. C. Vessey has shown that William was certainly not an impartial observer, especially when dealing with the events of the 1170s and 1180s. Vessey believes that William’s claim to have been commissioned by Amalric is a typical ancient and medieval topos, or literary theme, in which a wise ruler, a lover of history and literature, wishes to preserve for posterity the grand deeds of his reign.D. W. T. C. Vessey, "William of Tyre and the art of historiography." Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973), pp. 437-38 William's claims of impartiality are also a typical topos in ancient and medieval historical writing.Vessey, pg. 446. His depiction of Baldwin IV as a hero is an attempt "to vindicate the politics of his own party and to blacken those of its opponents."Vessey, pg. 446. As mentioned above, William was opposed to Baldwin's mother Agnes of Courtenay, Patriarch Heraclius, and their supporters; his interpretation of events during Baldwin's reign was previously taken as fact almost without question. In the 20th century, Marshall W. Baldwin,Marshall W. Baldwin, "The Decline and Fall of Jerusalem, 1174-1189", in A History of the Crusades (gen. ed. Kenneth M. Setton), vol. 1: The First Hundred Years (ed. Marshall W. Baldwin, University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), pg. 592ff. Steven Runciman,Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 2: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East (Cambridge University Press, 1952), pg. 404. and Hans E. MayerMayer, The Crusades, pp. 127-128. were influential in perpetuating this point of view, although the recent re-evaluations of this period by Peter Edbury and Bernard Hamilton have undone much of William's influence. An often-noted flaw in the chronicle is William's poor memory for dates. "Chronology is sometimes confused, and dates are given wrongly", even for basic information such as the regnal dates of the kings of Jerusalem.Edbury and Rowe, 1988, pg. 26. Despite his biases and errors, William is universally considered one of the greatest medieval historians. R. B. C. Huygens notes that "depuis toujours, Guillaume de Tyr a été considéré comme l'un des meilleurs écrivains du moyen âge."Huygens, Chronicon, pg. 39. Steven Runciman wrote that "he had a broad vision; he understood the significance of the great events of his time and the sequence of cause and effect in history."Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 2, pg. 477.Christopher Tyerman calls him "the historian's historian"Tyerman, God's War, pg. 361. and "the greatest crusade historian of all."Christopher Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades (University of Toronto Press, 1998), pg. 126., and Bernard Hamilton says he "is justly considered one of the finest historians of the Middle Ages".Hamilton, pg. 6. As the Dictionary of the Middle Ages says, "William's achievements in assembling and evaluating sources, and in writing in excellent and original Latin a critical and judicious (if chronologically faulty) narrative, make him an outstanding historian, superior by medieval, and not inferior by modern, standards of scholarship."Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 12, pg. 643. References Sources and further reading Latin chronicle and translations *William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans. E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey. Columbia University Press, 1943. *''Willemi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon'', ed. R. B. C. Huygens. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, vol. 38. Turnholt: Brepols, 1986. *''L'Estoire d'Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d'Outremer'', in Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux, vols. I-II (1844, 1859). *''La Chronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier'', ed. Louis de Mas-Latrie. Paris, 1871. *''Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs'', ed. Alexis Paulin Paris. Paris, 1879-1880. *Margaret Ruth Morgan, La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184-1197). Paris, 1982. *Janet Shirley, Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century: The Rothelin Continuation of the History of William of Tyre with part of the Eracles or Acre text. Ashgate, 1999. Secondary sources *Peter W. Edbury and John G. Rowe, "William of Tyre and the Patriarchal election of 1180." The English Historical Review 93 (1978), repr. in Kingdoms of the Crusaders: From Jerusalem to Cyprus (Aldershot: Ashgate, Variorum Collected Series Studies, 1999), pp. 1–25. *Peter W. Edbury and John G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East. Cambridge University Press, 1988. *Peter W. Edbury, "Propaganda and faction in the Kingdom of Jerusalem: the background to Hattin." Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller (Leiden: Brill, 1993), repr. in Kingdoms of the Crusaders: From Jerusalem to Cyprus (Aldershot: Ashgate, Variorum Collected Series Studies, 1999), pp. 173–189. *Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and his Heirs, Cambridge University Press, 2000. *Rudolf Hiestand, "Zum Leben und Laufbahn Wilhelms von Tyrus", Deutsches Archiv 34 (1978), pp. 345–380. *R. B. C. Huygens, "Guillaume de Tyr étudiant: un chapître (XIX, 12) de son Histoire retrouvé", Latomus 21 (1962), pp. 811–829. *R. B. C. Huygens, "Editing William of Tyre." Sacris Erudiri 27 (1984), pp. 461–473. *G. A. Loud and J. W. Cox, "The 'lost' autobiographical chapter of William of Tyre's history (book XIX.12)", The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan V. Murray (ABC-Clio, 2006). *Hans Mayer, "Guillaume de Tyr à l’école." Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Dijon 117 (1985-86), repr. in Kings and Lords in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Aldershot: Ashgate, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 1994), pp. 257–265. *Hans Mayer, "Zum Tode Wilhelms von Tyrus", Archiv für Diplomatik 5-6 (1959-1960), pp. 182–201. *Margaret Ruth Morgan, The Chronicle of Ernoul and the Continuations of William of Tyre. Oxford University Press, 1973. *Hans Prutz, "Studien über Wilhelm von Tyrus." Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 8 (1883), pp. 91–132. *R. C. Schwinges, "William of Tyre, the Muslim enemy, and the problem of tolerance." Tolerance and Intolerance. Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades, ed. Michael Gervers and James M. Powell, Syracuse University Press, 2001. *D. W. T. C. Vessey, "William of Tyre and the art of historiography." Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973), pp. 433–455. External links *[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/tyre-cde.html Excerpts from the Historia] from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook *Fiasco at Damascus 1148 from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook *Latin version from the Patrologia Latina, via The Latin Library *Latin version from Crusades-Encyclopedia.com *Latin version with concordance from Intertext.com *Old French translation and continuation from Internet Medieval Sourcebook *English translation by E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey, from ALCS Humanities E-Books (login required) Category:1130s births Category:1186 deaths Category:People from Jerusalem Category:Crusade literature Category:12th-century historians Category:Canon law jurists Category:12th-century Roman Catholic archbishops ar:وليم الصوري bg:Вилхелм Тирски cs:Guillaume z Tyru de:Wilhelm von Tyrus el:Γουλιέλμος της Τύρου es:Guillermo de Tiro eo:Guillaume de Tiro fr:Guillaume de Tyr it:Guglielmo di Tiro he:ויליאם מצור la:Willelmus Tyrensis arz:وليام الصورى nl:Willem van Tyrus ja:ギヨーム・ド・ティール pl:Wilhelm z Tyru pt:Guilherme de Tiro ru:Вильгельм Тирский sl:Viljem iz Tira fi:Guillaume de Tyre sv:Vilhelm av Tyrus tr:Tireli William uk:Вільгельм Тірський